The app combines disease surveillance from mining public social media data with geofencing and local notification technologies, presenting its findings in animated radar maps that alert parents to Sick Zones.

Those maps can be viewed as single reports at the local level, or by intensity of groups of reports at the regional level, and Sickweather users will receive alerts when they travel near areas where the flu, strep throat, or other illnesses have been reported.

Sickweather CEO Graham Dodge said in a release announcing the availability of the Android app:

Sickweather is like the Waze for sickness. When someone checks-in their symptoms with us, not only is their report anonymously mapped for their community to be alerted, but it is also logged to their own “My Reports Map,” which can be used to track when and where they’ve been sick, or have come in contact with others who are sick.